logo
US President Donald Trump arrives in Scotland

US President Donald Trump arrives in Scotland

BreakingNews.ie21 hours ago
US President Donald Trump has landed in Scotland ahead of a four-day visit.
Air Force One – the presidential plane – touched down at Prestwick Airport in Ayrshire on Friday just before 8.30pm.
Advertisement
The president was met by Scottish Secretary Ian Murray as he disembarked, before heading to the waiting presidential helicopter Marine One, bound for his nearby Turnberry golf course.
Trump supporters gather at Prestwick Airport ahead of US President Donald Trump's arrival (Jane Barlow/PA)
During his time in the country, the president will meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Scottish First Minister John Swinney, as well as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Mr Trump and Mr Starmer are expected to discuss potential changes to the UK-US trade deal which came into force last month.
Mr Swinney has pledged to 'essentially speak out for Scotland'.
Speaking as he boarded Air Force One, the president said he would be having dinner with the Prime Minister at Turnberry, before 'going to go to the oil capital of Europe, which is Aberdeen'.
Advertisement
Air Force One landed just before 8.30pm (Jane Barlow/PA)
He said: 'We're going to have a good time. I think the Prime Minister and I get along very well.'
He added: 'We're going to be talking about the trade deal that we made and maybe even approve it.'
He also told journalists he was 'looking forward' to meeting with the 'Scottish leader' Mr Swinney, describing him as a 'good man'.
Police on horseback outside the perimeter of Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire (Robert Parry/PA)
During his time in Scotland, the president is also likely to spark a number of protests, with concerns being raised about how such demonstrations are policed.
Advertisement
Police Scotland has called in support from other forces in the UK to help bolster officer numbers, though senior officers and the organisation which represents the rank-and-file, have accepted Mr Trump's visit will have an impact.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Our political party system is shattering and Britain could soon become ungovernable
Our political party system is shattering and Britain could soon become ungovernable

The Sun

time27 minutes ago

  • The Sun

Our political party system is shattering and Britain could soon become ungovernable

Days before the 2015 General Election, then Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted: 'Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.' Given the decade since: six Prime Ministers, four elections, Brexit gridlock, a pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, partygate and the mini-budget, many rightly wonder: if that was stability, how bad could chaos have been? 3 But at the time, Cameron's pitch worked, partly because many Brits feared Labour might end up governing in a three-party combo with the Lib Dems and SNP, with the late former Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond calling the shots. Unlike our neighbours on the Continent, we aren't used to coalitions and dislike the idea of smaller parties potentially holding the Government to ransom. Fast forward to 2025 and it looks like Brits might have to get used to coalitions. Our political map has been reshaped. Fewer than half the public now describe themselves as strong supporters of any one party. The days of being 'a Labour family' or voting for 'anything with a blue rosette' are over. Voters are now far more promiscuous, shopping around to see what they like best. 3 As recently as 2017, the two main parties took over 80 per cent of the vote. That plummeted to 57 per cent in last year's election, a post-war low and our polling suggests it's fallen further still since - just 43 per cent now say they'd vote Labour or Tory. Instead, voters are turning to new emerging parties on the right and left. Last year's General Election was the first time post-war that more than three parties each won over ten per cent of the vote, and more than four won over five per cent. Why is this happening? More in Common's latest report Shattered Britain delves into what's behind our growing fragmentation. Simply put - it finds the old dividing lines of left and right no longer cut it. New political fault lines are emerging. These include whether we can fix a country many feel is broken by improving our institutions or, as 38 per cent think, we need to 'burn them all down'; whether the answers to our problems are common sense or complex; whether diversity strengthens or erodes British identity; and crucially whether we trust mainstream news or prefer independent voices online. Just as our politics is fragmenting, so too is where we get our information with a knock on effect on politics, reducing the stranglehold the big two parties have in communicating with the public. 3 None of these divides map neatly onto our existing political landscape and our First Past the Post system is struggling to cope as these new fault lines scatter Britons votes across multiple parties. More in Common's latest MRP - a model for projecting what the next Parliament might look like, helps to show how this might all play out: it suggests an election tomorrow could deliver a political map we've never seen before. Reform UK would come first on 290 seats, Labour trailing on 126, Tories barely third on 81, the Liberal Democrats snapping at their heels on 73. With 325 seats needed for a majority, the likeliest outcome would be a Reform UK–Tory coalition. But how comfortable would the Conservatives be as junior partners to Farage's Party, given the bad blood between them? Even those headline numbers hide more turbulence beneath the surface. Nearly 100 seats could be won on under 30 per cent of the vote and small shifts could flip many of them. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, voting for the first time at the next election, will make up just two to three per cent of the electorate, but in tight races, that could make all the difference. With only a modest Labour recovery from midterm blues and a Reform dip, we could end up with the only viable option being a five-party coalition: Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Greens and Plaid Cymru. How's that for a stable Government? And that's before factoring in Jeremy Corbyn's newly announced party, which our polling suggests could take 10 per cent of the vote, further muddying our electoral waters. At this stage it's fair to ask will the next Parliament be ungovernable? Maybe, but we've been here before. In 2019, the Brexit Party was topping the polls, the Lib Dems surged, and the two main parties were barely registering a third of the vote. Come election day, Boris Johnson won a stonking majority. In the early 1980s, the SDP–Liberal Alliance looked set to reshape politics, only to fall back. Still, as Britain drifts into uncharted political waters and the two main parties continue to struggle, it might be wise to use our summer holidays on the Continent to pick up a few tips on coalition-building from our European neighbours. THE UK used to be known worldwide for its stable, two party political system. The choice was binary: Tory or Labour. Elections nearly always delivered a majority government. But all that could be about to change. Old party allegiances have shattered. Our political system has become fragmented. Nigel Farage and his Reform Party have redrawn the political map and decimated the Tory vote. On the Left, Labour are being challenged by the rise of the Greens and creation of Jeremy Corbyn's far-left party. But that begs the question: is Britain about to become ungovernable? We are not used to Coalition governments - but all the evidence suggests we are about to get one. Pollsters say the most likely outcome is a Reform Tory Coalition. But can we really imagine Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch in bed together - after they have spent five years at each other's throats? The alternative is a rainbow coalition of Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP, Greens, and Plaid Cymru. That's a dizzying mix. I doubt a government stuffed with so many different political personalities and policies would last five minutes - let alone five years. The result would surely be another snap election and yet more political turmoil? The next general election is still four years away and much can happen in that time. One thing is clear - voters are desperate for Britain to break out of its current quagmire. They want politicians who can actually get things done and aren't held to hostage by their backbenchers. It's why they gave Boris Johnson a majority to get Brexit done - and took it off him again when the Tories sank into civil war. It's why they handed Keir Starmer a landslide - then sent his poll ratings tumbling when he failed to come up with a big package of reforms. If the polls stay the same then it looks like Britain is heading for more political turbulence and a coalition. But who knows? Voters may decide to gamble big and hand Nigel Farage a majority next time. I wouldn't bet against it.

Trump is telling the truths Europe's leaders won't
Trump is telling the truths Europe's leaders won't

Telegraph

time27 minutes ago

  • Telegraph

Trump is telling the truths Europe's leaders won't

The most important skill in European politics is the ability to pretend that all is well. In London, Paris, Berlin and a dozen other capitals, the order of the day is continuing the series of polite lies that exculpate a generation of politicians from bearing responsibility for their failures. Things that intrude on this bubble – videos of protests circulating online, the views of the electorate, writers who draw attention to the catastrophic consequences of a toxic combination of welfarism and open borders – are censored, ignored or threatened with legal action. Donald Trump's occasional forays into European affairs have much the same effect on the political class as a stick of dynamite chucked into a lake does on fish. His comments are followed by floundering, gasping, and goggle-eyed outrage. They are not met with actual rebuttal. With Europe engaged in a project of total self-delusion, it has fallen to the American president to tell us the truths we are unwilling to tell ourselves. For all Mr Trump's failings, he is rarely accused of being insufficiently blunt. And on Europe, he has a regrettable tendency to be correct. While our politicians wring their hands over vast numbers of economic migrants abusing an outdated asylum system, attempting to square the circle of an open borders approach to migration, generous welfare states, and hopelessly outdated laws and treaties, Mr Trump is free to state what he sees: 'You better get your act together or you're not going to have Europe anymore.' It is a view that will resonate with voters across the continent. The great weakening of Europe's borders has been unfolding for a decade now, since German chancellor Angela Merkel crumpled when confronted with a crying child and attempted to reshape her country around the slogan 'wir schaffen das': 'we can do this'. Political will, however, was not sufficient to change reality on its own. The cultural costs have not been negligible. Nor have the economic consequences, particularly alongside other flawed policies. The costs of net zero continue to mount, with politicians seemingly eager to dismantle Europe's industrial base in a fit of moral fervour. When Mr Trump tells Sir Keir Starmer that Britain should go against this consensus and drill for the oil in the North Sea, or objects to the 'detrimental' effect of windfarms on the 'beauty of Scotland', he is articulating the views of millions of British voters. That they are unpopular in Westminster means that these criticisms are frequently ignored or overruled. It does not mean that they are untrue. Indeed, it is often the truth of Mr Trump's statements that triggers the most furious backlash against them. When he says Europeans risk 'losing their wonderful right to freedom of speech', or his vice-president J D Vance criticises 'digital censorship ', the criticisms sting because they are clearly correct, and all the more so contrasted against attempts to rebut them. When the French mission to the UN asserted that 'in Europe, one is free to speak, not free to spread illegal content' – a statement that would have been just as true of the Soviet Union – the official State Department account responded by pointing out the only true effect was to protect Europe's 'leaders from their own people'. It is hard to disagree with this sentiment. It is difficult, too, to disagree with Trump's blunt statement that recognising a Palestinian state 'doesn't matter '. French president Emmanuel Macron has declared that France will join Spain and Ireland in this policy. As Mr Trump says, however, it is a statement that 'doesn't carry weight', and is 'not going to change anything'. In this, it is a perfect summary of Europe's travails. Political leaders who have squandered the legacies they were handed still behave as if the world hangs upon their word, even as events overtake them. Gesture policies like state recognition are thrown out without any thought as to their actual effect or practicality. What does it mean to recognise a Palestinian state in an area controlled by Hamas? How is this policy meant to assist in quelling the fanatical opposition amongst Palestinian elites to any Jewish state in the Middle East, or for that matter the presence of any other minority? In what sense is rewarding Hamas's butchering and raping of Israeli civilians meant to have any effect other than prolonging this bloody conflict? Mr Trump is not always right. His protectionist trade policy is a catastrophic misstep. He was similarly disastrously wrong on Ukraine, and it is by good fortune rather than design that his ham-fisted attempts to force Kyiv into a terrible deal failed. There, Europe's leaders were for once in the right. The difference is that Mr Trump appears to have realised the error of his ways, and shifted his policies accordingly. To date, this has only once occurred in the other direction. It is clearly for the good that Europe is coming round to Mr Trump's views on defence, with Nato pledging to raise defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP after pressure from the White House, implicitly affirming the truth of his statement that the continent had been 'freeloading'. This was not cheap but it was necessary. We must now hope that similar reversals will follow in other fields, before irreparable damage is done.

Security operation under way on first full day of Trump's visit to Scotland
Security operation under way on first full day of Trump's visit to Scotland

Rhyl Journal

time29 minutes ago

  • Rhyl Journal

Security operation under way on first full day of Trump's visit to Scotland

The President is expected to take to the greens on the golf course at the Trump Turnberry resort, which he bought back in 2014. Ahead of that, a large number of police and military personnel have been spotted searching the grounds at the venue in South Ayrshire. Various road closures have been put in place, with limited access for both locals and members of the media. Mr Trump is staying at Turnberry for the start of a five-day private visit to Scotland which will see him have talks with both UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Scottish First Minister John Swinney. A meeting has also been scheduled for him to talk about trade with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday. With no talks apparently scheduled for Saturday, the President – a well-known golf enthusiast – appears to be free to play the famous Turnberry course. However, protests have been planned, with opponents of Mr Trump expected to gather in both Edinburgh and Aberdeen later on Saturday, with the Stop Trump coalition planning what it has described as being a 'festival of resistance'. As well as visiting Trump Turnberry, Mr Trump will head to Aberdeenshire later in his visit and is expected to open a second course at his golf resort in Balmedie. As he landed in Ayrshire on Friday, the President took questions from journalists, telling Europe to 'get your act together' on immigration, which he said was 'killing' the continent. He also praised Sir Keir, who he described as a 'good man', but added that the UK Prime Minister is 'slightly more liberal than I am'. Saturday will be the first real test of Police Scotland during the visit as it looks to control the demonstrations in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, as well as any which spring up near to the president's course. The force has asked for support from others around the UK to bolster officer numbers, with both organisations representing senior officers and the rank-and-file claiming there is likely to be an impact on policing across the country for the duration of the visit. Before the visit started, Mr Swinney appealed to Scots to protest 'peacefully and within the law'.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store